Innovation and Speciation: earliest fully a whale (Evolution)

by David Turell , Thursday, May 30, 2019, 15:19 (2003 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: As usual you have skipped over the obvious need for preparatory design, and therefore a designer.

dhw: As usual you have skipped over the fact that in my hypothesis, evolution does NOT require preparatory design, but proceeds through responses to changing conditions. I do not believe that your God operated on pre-whale legs and turned them into flippers BEFORE they entered the water; I find it more logical that legs turned into flippers as a result of intelligent restructuring in response to new demands. In my theistic version, the designer has designed the autonomous mechanism that makes restructuring possible.

DAVID: Sure I skipped over your belief design is not required in advance, but that cells invent new forms on the fly. Not possible, so I've discounted it.

dhw: I’d be interested to know what Shapiro, with his belief in cellular intelligence and his concept of “natural genetic engineering”, would make of your certainty, and what other scientists – believers and non-believers – would make of your fixed belief that your God specially designed all innovations, lifestyles, natural wonders and econiches in anticipation of changing conditions over some of which (local) he had no control, and that every life form was specially designed for the sole purpose of eating or being eaten until he specially designed H. sapiens.

What my faith in God causes me to believe has nothing to do with Shapiro's research which I accept also. What strains my credulity is your extrapolation taking what individual cells do constantly in an intelligent fashion moment by moment to then assigned them the ability to speciate new complexly designed more advanced organisms. It is a feat of great imagination.